Designing the Distribution Network in a Cassava Supply Chain in Thailand

According to Thailand’s infrastructure development and investment plan, an efficient transportation network will take form over the next three to five years. Dual-track railway will be built to cover more areas of the country and will be offered more routes between central, north-eastern, and eastern Thailand. Therefore, rail transportation or train transportation will become a good choice or an important conveyance of goods from various origins to various destinations in Thailand due to its competitiveness which is low cost of freight. This paper presents a concept of designing the new distribution network in Thailand using rail as a major mode of transportation. Cassava distribution chain is selected as a case study and prototype of this new design, since Thailand is an agricultural country and cassava is one the most exported agricultural product. Various factors influencing the choice of distribution network and transportation mode, such as customer satisfaction, characteristics of products, cost, etc., are investigated and are described. Linear programming models represent the current distribution model and the new distribution model are presented and then solved by Microsoft Excel with Open Solver Software. The result reveals that the new distribution network of cassava product in Thailand can lower the total distribution cost up to 51.63% compare to the current distribution network